Nic Pizzolatto Reveals The First Details On ‘True Detective’ Season Two

We haven’t heard much from True Detective showrunner Nic Pizzolatto since the first season of True Detective ended. There had been some suggestion in a deleted tweet of his that the second season might feature female leads, but there was never any follow up. Earlier this month, there were rumors that Jessica Chastain would take a part in the series, and before that, rumors that Brad Pitt would be involved. But none of those can be true because, according to Pizzolatto, casting hasn’t even begun yet.

In a long public radio interview with Pizzolatto, in which he spends the majority of the time breaking down season one of the show, Pizzolotto finally reveals some details about the second season. The most surprising take-away? Three leads:

“Right now, we’re working with three leads. It takes place in California. Not Los Angeles, but some of the lesser known venues of California and we’re going to try to capture a certain psychosphere ambience of the place, much like we did with season one. The characters are all new, but I am deeply in love with all of them. We have the entire season broken out, and I have a couple of scripts, and we’ll probably start casting within the coming month.

Psychosphere ambience?! I like the sound of that (though, I will probably miss the Southern setting, which I thought was one of the show’s major strengths, if only because of the fantastic accents). The important thing, however, is that your #TrueDetectiveSeason2 suggestions should now include three names, instead of two, meaning that if they do decide to cast Troy and Abed in the second season, they’re going to need to bring along Levar Burton, too.

@Delaware — so, so true. Once you get away from the coast, California gets pretty weird, pretty fast. Like, Florida-weird. Fresno alone is one of the weirdest places I’ve ever been. Low-tech agriculture dominates, high-tech hospitals on seemingly every corner, and a rampaging meth problem.

The part of northern California that you’re describing, however — that would be a great counterpart to season 1’s Louisiana. Majestic and mysterious landscapes, mountains and foothills that rarely see humans….

Yeah, Weaverville and the surrounding towns in the Trinity Lake area is pretty interesting. When I was growing up, every few summers the California government would sanction drug raids on the pot farms growing in the mountains. The farmers would respond by setting the forest on fire (oddly enough, the towns were very pro-farmer).

I know we’re kidding around but I drove through the Mojave on the way to LA and I swear to god I wanted to kill every living I saw after ten miles. It makes sense for season two to be there because that’s where all the serial killers live anyway.

Hey, whaddya know? I AM an asshole. And it’s been several years since I spent time in Fresno, but I worked with a lot of healthcare professionals who worked there, and that’s what they told me. Which seems to be buttressed by this (granted, from 2004, but that’s around the time I was working with those folks):

@Mr List — fair enough. Probably an overstatement on my part, since I just spent a week in rural north Florida, and when I heard weird, eerie yelps, my traveling companion (a Florida native), nonchalantly said, “Yeah, that’s probably just a bobcat getting eaten by an alligator.” NO THANK YOU.